Celebrating in the Smokies: Pigeon Forge
RV life gives us lots of gifts. I was born on Memorial Day, which means that my birthday weekend is always a weekend full of prior engagements and traffic jams. Birthday trips are few and far between because who wants to travel on one of the busiest travel weekends of the year if they don't have to? This year was different. I would automatically be traveling on my birthday, which gave me a special opportunity to choose where I wanted to be come Memorial Day weekend. We decided to venture somewhere that I'd wanted to visit for a long time: The Great Smoky Mountains. We booked our stay in the Smokies extremely early on in our planning process and decided that 3 weeks would be plenty of time to explore the towns and the national park, while still making time for our usual work and chores.
As luck would have it, Anthony got a new job shortly before our Smokies stay, and he was able to arrange his schedule to finish up at his old job just before Memorial Day weekend and delay the start at his new job a week. This meant a week off to celebrate my birthday and his new job. Having my own business, it's hard to take time off, but I set my vacation responder and made a pact with myself to only do the essential work tasks so that we could really enjoy our celebration.
This was how our Week of Fun was created.
The Smokies is a great area to have a vacation. The national park is so big that the number of hiking trails and other activities is overwhelming. Then we have the surrounding towns of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge which offer an endless array of mountain tourist attractions. It had been a while since I planned an actual vacation, but I tried to pack in a blend of fun activities and downtime. In addition to our birthday and new job celebrations, Memorial Day Weekend would also kick off our Summer to Remember bucket list. Each year we join full-time RVers Keep Your Daydream with their Summer to Remember challenge. We make a list of things we want to do and see how many we can check off between Memorial Day and Labor Day Weekends. What better time to kick off Week of Fun than the very same weekend we start checking off summer memories?! Our Summer to Remember challenge will be discussed in detail in a future blog post.
One of the best pieces of advice I can give regarding vacation planning is "Know thyself." Especially in destinations like the Smokies, there is no way of doing every activity you want. If you have a good sense of what you enjoy, it's a lot easier to prioritize activities. There are so many popular tourist attractions that people say you have to do, but if it's not your cup of tea, skip it! We tried our best to only book the tourist attractions that were actually of interest to us. In the Smokies, you definitely have to embrace a fair amount of kitsch. Pigeon Forge in particular is like the Vegas strip, but with amusements instead of casinos, and less people walking around half-naked chugging giant daiquiris from Fat Tuesday's. Many of the attractions reek of "manufactured tourist trap," but we made a conscious choice to embrace the vibe of the town. After all, when in Rome! That doesn't mean we weren't choosy about our plans, though. We weeded through the kitsch and found the excursions that made the most sense to us. Here are some of our favorites:
Pink Jeep Tours
It's no surprise that we gravitated toward an activity that would blend "tourist" and "nature." The Pink Jeep Tours of Pigeon Forge were a fantastic way to get our first taste of the National Park. We didn't need to worry about driving/parking, we didn't have to plan any hikes, and we got to hear about the history of the park from a guide. Our guide Len was great. A fellow RVer himself, we had lots to talk about while enjoying our tour. We had our choice of several tour routes and decided on Roaring Fork Road. It was one of the scenic drives we hadn't planned doing just ourselves, so it was the right fit for us.
We were only one of two families on the tour, which made the entire experience so much more personalized. We chose an early morning tour, hoping traffic on the scenic road would be less (it was), and there'd be a little better chance of seeing wildlife (we saw a few bears that were very far away, but more on the wildlife later).
The Pink Jeep tours offer a unique opportunity to enjoy some 4x4 off-roading at the end of the tour. Anthony and I tend to find normal tours boring, so anything that adds a little thrill or adventure piques our interest much more. After completing Roaring Fork, Len took us up a mountain behind Pigeon Forge for some rides up the boulders. It was a really fun way to cap off the tour.
The Island
The Island at Pigeon Forge is basically a giant outlet mall with some amusement park rides, centered around a plaza that contains a Las Vegas Bellagio-inspired fountain. Very touristy indeed, but there are activities for everyone. If you plan your visit in advance, you can find coupons online (or get them at the information desk) for almost every store and attraction. We printed all the coupons we thought we might use, and decided to go the Sunday morning of memorial day, right after it opened. The plan was to do the rides first, before the crowds started showing up. Afterwards we would do some shopping. This plan worked out great. The very first ride we did was the SkyFly Soaring America ride, a 5D attraction that simulates flying over various US landmarks. We had no wait getting on the ride and had the best time "flying" over places that we've either been to, or will be able to go to soon, thanks to our new life of travel. It really put into perspective how lucky we are to have the flexibility to see these landmarks in real life, and not just on the screen.
After SkyFly, we went on the Great Smoky Mountain Wheel and also took a few stabs at some arcade games before it got too busy. Then it was time to shop, and by shop we mean mostly walk around, since we don't like to buy too much stuff when it wouldn't fit in our small space.
We were pleasantly surprised with the lack of crowds at such a popular location during a holiday weekend. Our morning at The Island was pleasant and enjoyable.
The Titanic Museum
Something you might not know about Pigeon Forge is that downtown is full of museums! Many are family friendly, such as Wonderworks and the Wax Museum. We're picky about our museums and opted to just do one, the Titanic Museum. From the outside, it looks extremely gimmicky...
...See what I mean? However, looks are deceiving. The museum, which serves as a replica for the ship itself, does a fantastic job at capturing not only the architecture, but the history of that voyage and its tragic fate. The research was incredible; museum curators had actually followed up with survivors so that their stories could be posted. The museum also housed several artifacts from the actual ship. There is a lot of information, but you have the option of reading all the displays or using an audio tour, or both! To add to the visitor interaction, each person is giving a boarding pass upon arrival to the ship. The passes include a name of an actual passenger who had been on the Titanic along with their backstory. I was a first class woman with a teenage daughter. We both survived and I lived to be in my 80s, ultimately passing from illness in Massachusetts, of all places. Anthony's fate was more dire. He was one of the postal service workers on the ship and he perished when the ship sunk on April 15, which also happened to be his birthday.
Honorable Mentions
We did some other activities in Pigeon Forge that we can't exactly rave about, but are worth mentioning. The first is probably the most gimmicky activity, which was seeing Paula Deen's Lumberjack Feud. It's a lumberjack show that pits half the audience against the other half, while the lumberjacks engage in a series of events to see which family, the Dawsons or the McGraws, reigns supreme. Lumberjack events are really fun to watch, and the athleticism of the lumberjacks and Jills is impressive. However, we're grown adults who can very easily spot all the scripted portions of the show, and there were a lot. We're fairly certain that, no matter which show you attend, the final event will always determine which family wins, and the final event, the log roll, is partly faked. Young kids might get a kick out of the Jacks falling on the log (sometimes hitting him in rather painful places, if you catch my drift), but it was clearly pre-determined who was to fall when. Give us a legitimate lumberjack show without the scripted nonsense, and we'd be a lot happier. That being said, if you're vacationing with your family and want some entertainment, the Lumberjack Feud is a decent choice for an all-ages event.
Mountain Coasters are a'plenty in the Smokies. From Gatlinburg to Pigeon Forge and beyond, you can't go more than a mile without coming across some rails built into the foothills. We love a good mountain coaster, "good" being the operative word. While in the Smokies we tried a few, and they're really hit-or-miss. Much depends on the organization of the rides' operation, while a lot also depends on how crowded the coaster is. For those who aren't familiar, mountain coasters allow you to ride one person (or two if you're small) at a time, and you control the speed. Unfortunately, whenever a ride is user-controlled, there are bound to be some problems. You can control the speed but you're not supposed to stop in the middle of the track. You're allowed to go as fast as you want, except if someone is going slow in front of you, you get trapped at their speed, lest you crash into them which is of course prohibited and dangerous. The coasters can be loads of fun if you're free to go at your chosen speed, but this seldom happens. Once one person goes slow or accidentally brakes, all bets are off for the riders behind them. For this reason, we a real love/hate relationship with these rides. My personal favorite ended up being the Goats on the Roof Coaster, right on the border of Pigeon Forge and Sevierville. I was able to cruise down full-throttle with only a couple of small hang-ups. Goats on the Roof is also a wonderfully kitschy souvenir shop, which yes, actually has real live goats on the roof! Anthony's top-rated coaster was up the street, at the Smoky Mountain Alpine Coaster. It was a well-built coaster with good twists and turns, but Anthony was able to cruise his way down, while I got stuck behind a slow mover. Anthony assures me that, if I hadn't gotten stuck, this would have been my favorite coaster too.
We simply can't note everything we experienced in Pigeon Forge, but if you're planning a trip to the Smokies and want our recommendations on attractions, restaurants, or shops, feel free to drop us a comment or send us an email. Just remember to book what you like, and don't worry too much about what's a "must-do," because know one knows your preferences better than you.
Catch us in the next blog post, where we'll talk about the other main Smokies town, Gatlinburg, and what it has to offer. Until then, I'll leave you with my birthday cupcake eating montage, featuring a scrumptious confetti cupcake from Gigi's Cupcakes.
